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Chapter 3: It’s too hard to eat a banana with chopsticks; I’d rather use a knife and fork.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development states “Assimilation can never be pure because by incorporating new elements into its earlier schemata the intelligence constantly modifies the latter in order to adjust them to new elements" Piaget implies the difficulties associated with assimilation when there exist diverse values enforced on an individual during their socialisation. The sense of identity for Chinese people living all over the world is particularly complicated. Even though I had lost my Chinese identity, I didn’t feel part of the Australian identity. I believed the socialisation process was about conformity- fitting into society and gaining approval, then finding the comfort of individuality- who I was and what I wanted. ‘Chinese actually lacked any concept of identity, concentrating only on being Chinese and becoming ‘un-Chinese. Once a Chinese, always half Chinese.” I was torn between the success of gaining approval from my parents but also gaining social approval from western society. There existed the stereotype perception ‘being smart is not cool’ and this therefore resulted in low academic motivation, and an infatuation for rebellion. It was hard to escape the stress of the contrasting Asian culture, making it hard to assimilate fully into western society.
“…high pressure for achievement and consequently develop psychopathological problems such as anxiety and depression.” 40% of Asian students surveyed said in their perspective the pressure for success has a negative effect upon them. It was evident that the Asian parents and their children had different perspectives of the effects of this pressure. For the child, this pressure impacted upon their lives in areas such as self-esteem and social perceptions. This pressure may cause humiliation and distress on their harsh punishments for not achieving the parents desired marks. Their assimilation into western society becomes corrupt by the amount of restrictions and affects parents place on them. Ophelia Young’s article ‘Learning to say No to my immigrant parents’ illustrates the effects of pressure on Asian children. “I wanted to be a lawyer, a ballerina, the president, even a nun once, but never a doctor.” But guess what her parents pushed her to be? This overpowering pressure therefore led to her cheating in school to obtain the suitable marks for her parents. The ‘success stigma’ results in low self-esteem among the children to become individuals in society. It is evident that this overwhelming pressure to live up to parental expectations caused emotional stress and dissatisfaction in life. |
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